Pongmechanik
cyberniklas.de
cyberniklas.de
> Pongmechanik is an electromechanical version of the early digital tennis game Pong. It uses computer technology of the 1940's to implement a computer application of the 1970's. The control logic of the game is entirely built out of telephone relays, the same parts that the first digital computers used, which were built by pioneers like Konrad Zuse.
The simpilist one wind up space invaders: (3 minute video) https://youtu.be/xF50xGHeiM8
They show up on refurb YouTube and you can set the guts. It’s amazing what they could do mechanically.
I really like this one where you jump a motorcycle over things. Gameplay at end: (20 minutes)
Colour me jaded but I imagine these were pretty inexpensive back in the day which certainly brings some interesting perspective on the current prices of mechanical watches, most of which are doing something much simpler (granted on a much smaller scale, continuously for years on end, and with more durable materials, but still).
We could use a looping set of pipes, but it should also be possible to do randomization too. A simple way to do this is to have a four sided rectangular block with different pipe configurations on each side. As it is looped around, it gets spun randomizing the orientation like a slot machine, and then we lock the orientation to one of the four.
It might be difficult to carry out the integration fast enough. Although it would be funny if we ran it off a scooter engine to integrate at high speeds.
[0]https://twobithistory.org/2020/04/06/differential-analyzer.h...
The core idea is to build computational logic by choreographing movements of blocks/images on a digital canvas.